Greg Martin

Are there more cases of a given disease because something is causing more, or because doctors have become more aware of that disease? A recent paper in JAMA tackles this question for sepsis, the often deadly response to infection that is the most expensive condition treated in US hospitals.

Researchers from several academic medical centers, including Emory, teamed up to analyze sepsis cases using two methods. The first is based on the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) codes recorded for the patient’s stay in the hospital, which the authors refer to as “claims-based.” The second mines electronic medical record (EHR) data, monitoring the procedures and tests physicians used when treating a patient. The first approach is easier, but might be affected by changing diagnosis and coding practices, while the second is not possible at every hospital.

“This project was undertaken by several large, high quality institutions that have the ability to well characterize their sepsis patients and connect their EHR data,” says Greg Martin, MD, who is a co-author of the JAMA paper along with David Murphy, MD, PhD. The lead author, Chanu Rhee, MD, MPH, is from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the entire project was part of a Prevention Epicenter program sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Read more

Whether dietary supplementation with vitamin D is beneficial, in terms of preventing disease, has been controversial. However, vitamin D has been reported to increaseÂ immune cellsâ€™ production of microbe-fighting proteins. That’s why Emory doctorsÂ have been testing whether high doses of vitamin D couldÂ be helpful for critical care patients, who need to ward off infections.

The results of a small-scale clinical trial, presented in Denver this week at the American Thoracic Society meeting, suggest thatÂ high doses of vitamin D could decrease the length of hospital stays in critically ill patients with respiratory failure. Read more